Mike English's blog

Maybe we’re not quite addicted to computer mediated communication, but we’re certainly becoming increasingly dependent on it. Nicholas Carr, author of Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage, The Big Switch, and the forthcoming book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, argues that:

The problem with the addiction metaphor … is that it presents the normal as abnormal and hence makes it easy for us to distance ourselves from our own behavior and its consequences. By dismissing talk of “Internet addiction” as rhetorical overkill, which it is, we also avoid undertaking an honest examination of how deeply our media devices have been woven into our lives and how they are shaping those lives in far-reaching ways, for better and for worse. In the course of just a decade, we have become profoundly dependent on a new and increasingly pervasive technology.

Too often today, concerns about the implications of technology are dismissed because of the over-anxious language used by under-informed news media crying wolf to cash in on the zeitgeist. What are we doing to ensure that the voices of well-informed scholars and experts are not lost in the cacophony caused by the democratization of media? For example, how do we engage the public in civil discourse about issues like privacy, identity, and the changing face of media consumption before their attention becomes over-saturated by base sensationalism?

As Joseph, David, and Chris were all traveling this week, TheSocialWeb.tv posted video from Le Web as this week’s episode.

Dave Morin does an excellent job highlighting the value of Facebook‘s social graph data. – Real names, real friends, etc. as I pointed out the other day.

But I also think Michael Arrington raises an interesting point when he says that Facebook is not actually interested in being open. He goes on to say that “open” doesn’t always win, but is actually what the weaker competitors do when they band together to compete. I agree that it may not be in Facebook’s best interest to adopt the standards of the open stack at this point, but is openness really a sign of weakness? Or could it be rather a sign of strength when a social network adopts an open attitude – a sign of confidence in their network, and the commitment of their users to the community that their network provides? Is Facebook worried that being more “open” will degrade the value of the social graph data they’ve hoarded? Are things like Friend Connect, MySpaceID, and OpenSocial enough to force Facebook to adopt standards like OpenID and OAuth?

Much as I generally dislike the MySpace community, I’m really excited by Max Engel‘s enthusiasm about the open stack. If MySpace continues with its commitment to “open” ideas, a lot of users stand to benefit.

The biggest problem for “open” as I see it, is not having a place to control your identity that is both independent and centralized. A lot of sites are implementing bits and pieces of the open stack, but as far as I’ve seen, only a few of the large existing networks are trying to implement the whole thing. If I’m going to connect the dots between my accounts across the web and tie them all to one source for my profile information, I don’t want that source to be under someone else’s control. I don’t want my Facebook profile to be the definitive ‘me’ on the web, and I definitely don’t want it to be my MySpace page. I’m glad that we’re starting to have more freedom to choose, with a growing list of OpenID providers and all, but I still don’t see a comprehensive solution that works for me. I want complete independent and centralized control of my identity.

What makes Facebook so important? It seems that conversations about social networks always circle back to Facebook somehow. Why?

Well, I see a few reasons for this. First, Facebook has what is probably the most valuable social graph data. Accurate names and profiles are maintained by most of the users. I speculate that by slowly rolling out the service among colleges, and focusing on being a social utility, Facebook encouraged this social behavior. They didn’t add too many features or too many users too fast. As new users joined the network they copied the behavior of the earlier adopters, which was to provide accurate data.

But accuracy isn’t everything. You can find accurate profiles on LinkedIn for example, but LinkedIn doesn’t have the reach Facebook does. Facebook has penetrated the social networking market especially among college students (the original target audience) to such an extent that it is treated as a given, a ubiquitous utility, the way Google is treated for search. Facebook has entered the college student’s vernacular lexicon as a verb.

This is why Facebook is important. Not just because it’s done such a great job perfecting the social UX, – a vast improvement over MySpace‘s earlier efforts – but because ‘everyone you know’ is on Facebook, maintaining fairly accurate profiles.

It’s the data. Real data about real-world contacts.

Part of my goal with this blog is to create a real home for my online identity. If you’ve known me for very long you’ve probably watched me move from one URL to the next like a hermit crab outgrowing shells. I’ve grown tired of moving from one network to the next without anyplace to really hang my hat. My solution is to attempt building myself this space.

What I’d like is something akin to what Facebook is becoming, but open. (more on that later, as I continue to figure out what exactly it is I want this to be)

An interesting thing happened this evening; I re-discovered the DiSo project, but I learned much more about it this time than I had in the past. What I found is that to really learn what the project was doing, I had to learn who exactly was working on it.

I’ve grown so accustomed to the old media of broadcasting, that I first assumed if I found the project website, I’d learn everything I needed to know. Instead, I was surprised to find that there was much more information distributed across various blogs and social networks than there was in any one centralized location. I was forced to look at the project as the work of people.

Perhaps it’s fitting that DiSo would operate in this fashion.  It gives me a lot of hope that the new forms of social media are going to put people back in control of technology and bring online social interaction back in touch with authentic personhood.

This is the hope that goes in to building this home.